By Michael O’Brien and Susan Kemp – If social investment is the next (or perhaps current) big policy idea (as some commentators seem to suggest), then it requires some very careful review and discussion what it is and how it is designed to work. The new...

By Tim Dunlop – If you want to understand how transformative a universal basic income, or UBI, might be, it’s hard to beat the story told by Guy Standing during the lecture he gave in Melbourne in 2015. He was talking about a UBI trial he had supervised in India...

By Tim Tenbensel – Anyone taking a casual interest in health policy in New Zealand in 2017 would have a strong impression, based on recent media coverage, that our health system is currently severely stretched. Hardly a week has gone by without a new story about...

By Jemaima Tiatia-Seath – One life lost to suicide, is one life too many. The World Health Organisation estimates that globally, 800,000 people die by suicide each year. This is equivalent to a suicide death every 40 seconds. It is predicted that by the year...

By David Williams – An interdisciplinary team of University of Auckland staff from Social Anthropology and Law are nearing the completion of their work on a Marsden Fund project. We are preparing a book manuscript entitled The Shapeshifting Crown: Locating the...

By Barry Milne and Nichola Shackleton – What can we do to get the biggest reductions in obesity, and the greatest improvements in mental health and educational outcomes for NZ children? This is the question that Knowledge Lab, an interactive policy model of...